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Merriam-Webster's Words of the Year are words of the year lists published annually by the American dictionary-publishing company Merriam-Webster, Inc. The lists feature ten words from the English language. These word lists started in 2003 and have been published at the end of each year.
The Words of the Year usually reflect events that happened during the years the lists were published. For example, the Word of the Year for 2005, 'integrity', showed that the general public had an immense interest in defining this word amid ethics scandals in the United States government, corporations, and sports. The Word of the Year for 2004, 'blog', was looked up on the Online Dictionary the most as blogs began to influence mainstream media. In 2006, Merriam-Webster received a lot of publicity as 'truthiness', a word coined by Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report, topped the list.
Selection process
When the Word of the Year was started in 2003, Merriam-Webster determined which words would appear on the list by analyzing page hits and popular searches to its website. For example, the 2003 and 2004 lists were determined by online hits to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary and Online Thesaurus and to Merriam-WebsterCollegiate.com. In 2006 and 2007, Merriam-Webster changed this practice, and the list was determined by an online poll among words that were suggested by visitors to the site. Visitors were requested to vote for one entry out of a list of twenty words and phrases. The list consisted of the words and phrases that were frequently looked up on the site and those that were submitted by many readers. From 2008 onwards, however, user submissions have not been a deciding factor, and the list has been composed only of the words which were looked up most frequently that year. Merriam-Webster said that the reason for the change was that otherwise ordinary words were receiving so many hits that their significance could not be ignored.
(noun) Any of various economic and political philosophies that support social equality, collective decision-making, distribution of income based on contribution and public ownership of productive capital and natural resources, as advocated by socialists.
(noun) A socio-economic system based on private property rights, including the private ownership of resources or capital, with economic decisions made largely through the operation of a market unregulated by the state.
(noun) The maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments.
(pronoun) Used to refer to a single person whose gender is intentionally not revealed, or —Used to refer to a single person whose gender identity is nonbinary.
(noun) An outbreak of a disease that occurs over a wide geographic area (such as multiple countries or continents) and typically affects a significant proportion of the population.
(noun) A psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one's emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator
(noun) Something from which something else originates, develops, or takes form; a mold or die; an electroplated impression of a phonograph record used to make duplicate records.
(noun in biology) The substance in which tissue cells are embedded.
(noun in math) The arrangement of a set of quantities in rows and columns.
(noun in geology) Fine-grained rock in which fossils, crystals, or gems are embedded.
(verb) To grow fat, to feed greedily, or to live in luxury at the expense of others; to bolster or fasten with battens.
(noun) A strip fixed to something to hold it firm.
John Morse, president of Merriam-Webster, pointed out that "the most frequently looked up words are not the newest words, not the latest high-tech terms, not the cool new slang." Instead, these top ten words correlated to breaking news stories and world events in 2003. The top word democracy correlated to the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime, quarantine to a SARS epidemic, and matrix to the film The Matrix Revolutions.
(noun) Violent, tropical cyclone of the western North Atlantic with wind speeds at or above 72 miles per hour (32 m/s); most severe, intense storm; anything that suggests a violent storm.
(noun) A supporter of a cause, person, or group, especially a supporter with biased allegiance; a member of a military group harassing an enemy, especially a group engaged in guerrilla warfare against an occupying army.
(noun) The act of throwing a thing or person out a window.
In 2004, blogs were becoming highly popular and began to influence mainstream media. During the twelve-month period that decides the word of the year, the term blog had the most requests for a definition or explanation, so a new entry was placed in Merriam-Webster's printed dictionary for 2005. The other words on this list, such as incumbent, electoral, and partisan, were associated with major news events, such as the United States presidential election of 2004 or natural disasters that hit the US.
(noun) A formal reception of guests, as in a royal court; a pier that provides a place to land at a river; an embankment that was made to prevent a river from overflowing.
(adjective) Not apt or fitting, inappropriate; lack of judgement, sense, or reason; foolish; bungling or clumsy; incompetent.
For 2005, integrity was the most looked-up word in Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary. According to John Morse, President of Merriam-Webster, the word integrity slowly moved up the list to first place in 2005 because ethics scandals emerged around the United States regarding corporations, government, and sports, such as the CIA leak investigations, scandals in Congress, and disgraced athletes.
Hurricane Katrina, the bird flu, and the death of Pope John Paul II renewed public interest in words such as refugee,tsunami,pandemic,conclave, and levee. The word refugee was also a candidate for the American Dialect Society's Word of the Year; according to Morse, the term gained notoriety as the entire country debated with how to describe people affected by Hurricane Katrina. The debate, over whether refugee was the proper term to describe displaced residents or whether the term was pejorative, summoned several Americans to look up the word in their dictionaries to form their own opinion. The word refugee received more queries in one month than most words in an entire year. The word insipid made the Top 10 list after Simon Cowell described Anthony Fedorov's performance in American Idol as "pleasant, safe, and a little insipid." At number 10 is inept, a word that received a lot of attention after the days when PresidentGeorge W. Bush delivered a live prime time news conference that came to an awkward end when some television networks cut him off to return to their regularly scheduled programs.
(noun) Lack of integrity or honesty; decay; impairment of virtue and moral principles; undermining moral integrity; inducement by a public official with improper means to violate duties, for example, bribery.
After online visitors chose truthiness in a five-to-one majority vote as the Word of the Year of 2006, Merriam-Webster received a large amount of publicity. This was the first year in which Merriam-Webster used online voting to decide its Word of the Year. The term was created by Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central in The Colbert Report's first episode, which took place in October 2005, to describe things that he fervently believes to be the case regardless of the facts. In addition, truthiness became the American Dialect Society's Word of the Year for 2005.
(noun) A person who pretends to have more knowledge and skill than he or she actually possesses.
John Morse, President of Merriam-Webster, said that the word w00t was a good choice because it "blends whimsy and new technology". Spelled with two zeros in leetspeak, w00t reflects a new direction in the English language led by a generation raised on video games and cell phonetext messaging. While the word itself has not been published in its printed dictionary yet, Merriam-Webster claims that its presence in the Open Dictionary and the honors it's been awarded gives w00t a better chance at becoming an official word. It originally became popular in online gaming forums and is now used as an expression of excitement and joy. The word is also considered an acronym in the online gaming world for the phrase We owned the other team. This word was also used in the 1990 film Pretty Woman when Julia Roberts exclaimed "Woot, woot, woot!" to her date's friends during a polo match.
Placing second in 2007's contest, facebook created an unofficial verb out of the website Facebook. Founded in 2004, Facebook is a social network that allows its users to create a profile page and forge links with other friends and acquaintances.
(verb) To provide veterinary care for an animal or medical care for a person; to subject a person or animal to a physical examination or checkup; to subject to expert appraisal or correction; to evaluate for possible approval or acceptance.
(noun) economic or political theory advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods; society in which there is no private property; a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done.
(adjective) of, relating to, or involving members of two parties; specifically, marked by or involving cooperation, agreement, and compromise between two major political parties.
(noun) Vagrant or tramp; dishonest, worthless, or mischievous person; horse inclined to shirk or misbehave; individual with a chance and usually inferior biological variation.
(noun) the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also : the capacity for this
(noun) Any of various economic and political philosophies that support social equality, collective decision-making, distribution of income based on contribution and public ownership of productive capital and natural resources, as advocated by socialists.
(noun) A ghostly double of a living person, especially one that haunts such a person; An evil twin; A remarkably similar double; A person who has the same name as another; A fantastic monster that takes the forms of people, usually after killing them.
(noun) A person who formally opposes the current political structure, opposes the political group in power, opposes the policies of the political group in power, or opposes current laws.
(adjective) Stealthy; Exhibiting guilty or evasive secrecy.
Austerity was the most searched-for word of 2010. Interest in the word reached its highest point around May 1, the day the Greek government announced a series of austerity measures, but its popularity remained strong throughout the year. Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster editor-at-large, said: "Austerity clearly resonates with many people. We often hear it used in the context of government measures, but we also apply it to our own personal finances and what is sometimes called the new normal." Barack Obama used the word shellacking in November 2010, when acknowledging his party's losses in the US mid-term elections, and lookups of ebullient peaked in October, as thirty-three Chilean miners were successfully rescued after 69 days trapped underground.
(noun) The coexistence of opposing attitudes or feelings (such as love and hate) towards a person, object or idea; A state of uncertainty or indecisiveness.
(noun) A socio-economic system based on private property rights, including the private ownership of resources or capital, with economic decisions made largely through the operation of a market unregulated by the state.
(noun) Any of various economic and political philosophies that support social equality, collective decision-making, distribution of income based on contribution and public ownership of productive capital and natural resources, as advocated by socialists.
(foreign term) "After me, the deluge", a remark attributed to Louis XV of France in reference to the impending end of a functioning French monarchy and predicting the French Revolution.
The word pragmatic was looked up on Merriam-Webster's website an unprecedented number of times in 2011. Although the popularity of the word wasn't linked to any specific event, it received the greatest amount of interest in the latter half of the year, as the United States Congress introduced the Budget Control Act, and its Supercommittee began to craft deficit-reduction plans. Ambivalence was also a popular word throughout the year; John Moore, President of Merriam-Webster, remarked: "We think it reflects the public attitude toward a wide range of issues, including the economy, the ongoing debates in Washington, the presidential election, and most recently the race for the Republican Party nomination." The term vitriol was used frequently in the wake of the January 2011 Tucson shooting, which led to a national debate about political rhetoric.
In November 2011, political commentator David Gergen rounded off a CNN article (entitled "Have they gone nuts in Washington?") with the phrase "après moi, le déluge". The expression, attributed to Louis XV, typifies the attitude of those who don't care about the future, because they won't be around to face the consequences of their actions.
(noun) Any of various economic and political philosophies that support social equality, collective decision-making, distribution of income based on contribution and public ownership of productive capital and natural resources, as advocated by socialists.
(noun) A socio-economic system based on private property rights, including the private ownership of resources or capital, with economic decisions made largely through the operation of a market unregulated by the state.
(noun) The state of being married; A union of two or more people that creates a family tie and carries legal and/or social rights and responsibilities; A ceremony in which people wed.
(noun) Rule by the people, especially as a form of government, either directly or through elected representatives; A government under the direct or representative rule of the people of its jurisdiction; Belief in political freedom and equality; the "spirit of democracy".
(noun) The status, methods, character or standards expected of a professional or of a professional organization, such as reliability, discretion, evenhandedness, and fair play.
(noun) Any unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another; A thought, idea, joke, or concept that spreads online, often virally, in the form of e.g. an image, a video, an email, an animation, or music.
The popularity of many of the words on Merriam-Webster's 2012 list were influenced by the commentary and debate that surrounded that year's US presidential election. Socialism and capitalism were frequently referred to during the party conventions and the televised debates; interest in socialism spiked on the day of the election – November 6, 2012. The word malarkey was used several times by Joe Biden during his vice-presidential debate with Paul Ryan on October 11, and meme captured the public imagination after a remark made by Mitt Romney about "binders full of women", on October 16, went viral.
Touché remained a popular word throughout the year. This was partly as a result of a new technology of the same name being announced by Disney Research; however, John Morse, President of Merriam-Webster, suggested that touché was "simply a word enjoying a period of increased popular use, perhaps as a byproduct of the growing amount of verbal jousting in our culture, especially through social media".
(noun) The act or process of using words, sounds, signs, or behaviors to express or exchange information or to express your ideas, thoughts, feelings, etc., to someone else.
(noun) A job, activity, etc., that is very suitable for someone; The situation in which a business's products or services can succeed by being sold to a particular kind or group of people
(noun) a word or phrase for one thing that is used to refer to another thing in order to show or suggest that they are similar; An object, activity, or idea that is used as a symbol of something else
The popularity of the word science in 2013 was driven by debates around climate change and science in education. Further debates around pseudoscience and whether science can answer all of life's questions further drove its popularity.
(noun) Any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
(noun) A political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader
(noun) A belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
(noun) An economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market
(noun) The legally or formally recognized union of a man and a woman (or, in some jurisdictions, two people of the same sex) as partners in a relationship
(noun) A person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings
The suffix -ism goes all the way back to Ancient Greek, and was used in Latin and medieval French on its way to English. Originally, it turned a verb into a noun: think of baptize and baptism, criticize and criticism, or plagiarize and plagiarism. It has since acquired many other uses, including identifying a religion or practice (Calvinism, vegetarianism), a prejudice based on a specific quality (sexism, ageism), an adherence to a system (stoicism, altruism), a condition based on excess of something (alcoholism), or a characteristic feature or trait (colloquialism).
(pronoun) —Used to refer to a single person whose gender is intentionally not revealed, or —Used to refer to a single person whose gender identity is nonbinary
(noun) Refers to the aquatic animal that looks like a small lobster and lives in rivers and streams—i.e. to what's also known as a crawfish or crayfish.
(definite article) Pronounced /ðə/ before words that begin with consonants ("the governor") and /ði:/ before words that begin with a vowel; /ði:/ can also indicate emphasis or suggest uniqueness (THE Ohio State University).
(noun) "A style or mode of personal or creative expression that is absurdly exaggerated and often fuses elements of high and popular culture" or "Something so outrageously artificial, affected, inappropriate, or out-of-date as to be considered amusing."
Searches for they increased by 313% in 2019 over 2018; the use of they to refer to one person whose gender identity is nonbinary was added to the Merriam-Webster.com dictionary in September 2019. Quid pro quo is most often used in legal texts, and interest in the term is primarily attributed to the Trump–Ukraine scandal. Interest in crawdad is attributed to the novel Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. A Boeing pilot used egregious in describing an issue with the Boeing 737 MAX groundings. The Ohio State University tried to trademark the word The (later succeeding). Attorney General William Barr used snitty to describe the Mueller Report; Merriam-Webster describes the word as "a child of the 1970s." On January 23, The Washington Post columnist George Will wrote, "During the government shutdown, Graham’s tergiversations—sorry, this is the precise word—have amazed." A fashion exhibit at The Met sparked interest in camp.
(noun) An outbreak of a disease that occurs over a wide geographic area (such as multiple countries or continents) and typically affects a significant proportion of the population.
(noun) Any of a family (Coronaviridae) of large single-stranded RNA viruses that have a lipid envelope studded with club-shaped spike proteins, infect birds and many mammals including humans, and include the causative agents of MERS, SARS, and COVID-19.
Pandemic, coronavirus, quarantine, and asymptomatic are all in reference to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Amid the George Floyd protests of May 2020 and beyond, many Black Lives Matter supporters called on local governments to "defund the police", leading defund to have a 6,059% increase in lookups from 2019 to 2020; ensuing national conversations about references to the American Civil War led to the country music trio formerly known as Lady Antebellum changing their name to Lady A, ensuing a similar 885% increase in lookups. Mamba and kraken are both sports references, to "The Black Mamba" Kobe Bryant who died in January 2020 and the expansion National Hockey League franchise Seattle Kraken, respectively. Actress Jamie Lee CurtisTweeted in July 2020 that Merriam-Webster had recently added irregardless, a double negative, to the dictionary, although the dictionary had entered it in 1934. A frequent entry in victorious US Presidential candidateJoe Biden's vocabulary, malarkey saw its second appearance in the top 10, the other being in 2012 during his re-election campaign for Vice President.
The increase in searches for authentic was driven by stories and conversations about artificial intelligence (AI), celebrity culture, identity and social media, with AI technologies like deepfake blurring the lines between "real" and "fake". The coronation of Charles III and Camilla took place on May 6, 2023. Interest in dystopian was driven by warning about AI as well as the 2023 Canadian wildfires, which in June covered much of Canada and the United States in smoke, evoking a "dystopian landscape". The actress Viola Davis achieved the EGOT in February. The social media networking service Twitter was rebranded to X by owner Elon Musk in July.
^ Solomon, Wendy (2005-12-25). "The Nation; 'Integrity' Often Questioned in '05; The most-checked word in Webster's online and slang like 'infosnacking' catch linguists' eyes". Los Angeles Times.
^ Miller, Sara (2005-12-20). "Why 'integrity' was such a sought-after word this year ; It beat 'refugee' and 'contempt' as the most looked-up word of 2005, according to Merriam-Webster's online dictionary". The Christian Science Monitor. p. 02.
"electoral". Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1 ed.). Random House. 2006. Retrieved 2008-04-28.
^ Shostak, Jerome (2005). "6". Vocabulary Workshop: Level F (New ed.). New York City: William H. Sadlier. p. 67. ISBN0-8215-7111-7.
"hurricane". Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1 ed.). Random House. 2006. Retrieved 2008-04-28.
"cicada". American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Fourth ed.). Houghton Mifflin Company. 2006. Retrieved 2008-04-07.
"Glossary". Point Premium Root Beer International Cycling Classic presented by Time Warner Cable. Breakaway Event Productions. 2005-11-25. Archived from the original on 2008-04-15. Retrieved 2008-05-10.
"partisan". Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1 ed.). Random House. 2006. Retrieved 2008-05-10.
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